Sudan's civilians bear the brunt as fighting intensifies for control of vast nation

UN chief says Sudanese are facing a 'nightmare' of violence and atrocities amid battles between army and RSF paramilitary group

People displaced from eastern areas of Sudan's Al Jazira region arrive in Gedaref city. AFP

After surviving more than 18 months of Sudan’s civil war, Khartoum resident Amir Ahmed says the situation now is so desperate that he and his family must flee their home in the capital.

“Life has become so difficult, so difficult,” said Mr Ahmed, 45, a merchant from the Arkaweet area in southern Khartoum, where he lives with his wife and four children.

“We must leave now. The house just behind ours has been bombed and the children have already missed two years of education, but it’s too dangerous to travel.”

His predicament and that of millions trapped in the Sudanese capital follows intensified fighting in the city and fronts across the country in recent weeks as the Sudanese army goes on the offensive against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in a bid to reverse early losses.

The surge in fighting and the resulting consequences have prompted UN chief Antonio Guterres and two of the world body’s key agencies this week to paint a horrific picture of the situation facing civilians today.

The ethnically and religiously diverse nation is not new to war, but the scale and brutality visited on its people in this one is unlike anything seen during the recurring episodes of violence since independence nearly 70 years ago.

“The suffering is growing by the day,” Mr Guterres told the UN Security Council. “The people of Sudan are living through a nightmare of violence – with thousands of civilians killed, and countless others facing unspeakable atrocities, including widespread rape and sexual assaults.”

Sudan’s 50 million people, he continued, are also confronted with the rapid spread of diseases such as cholera, malaria, dengue fever, measles and rubella.

The UN migration agency said more than 11 million have been displaced, including three million who left the country.

The war spread to large swathes of the country soon after fighting broke out in Khartoum last year, first to the restive Darfur region in the West and Kordofan in the south-west and later to areas to the south of the capital.

But Khartoum, a sprawling metropolis combining three cities built on the banks of the Blue and White Niles, remains one of the most fiercely contested areas, with the two warring sides battling it out in densely built-up areas that render progress slow and costly.

Residents say they live in fear of the army’s air strikes and shelling by the RSF. They recount endless tales of hardship brought on by the war, from skyrocketing prices and diseases to malnutrition and near total lack of health care.

Elderly people suffering from chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure succumb to their ailments for lack of medication.

“You see them one day on the street and the next day their families tell you they are dead and buried,” Mohammed Yahya, a retailer in Khartoum’s main market, said of the ailing elderly. “Khartoum is no longer a place where you can live, but still, we thank God for everything,” he said, striking a note of piteous resignation.

Mr Ahmed said that for the past 18 months his family have lived on one meal a day – mostly lentils or rice – without electricity and in constant fear they might be killed or their home looted.

“Everything is available in the market, but only a few have enough to pay the asking price,” Mr Ahmed said.

To escape Khartoum, his family must travel across the Nile from Arkaweet to Omdurman, then find a car to take them to Shindi, a city about a two-hour drive north of the capital.

“The dangerous part is the trip to Omdurman,” Mr Ahmed said. “Too many checkpoints, where we can be stripped of all our precious possessions.”

Those who remain of Khartoum’s prewar population of at least seven million say conditions have worsened in recent weeks as the army went on the offensive to regain control of the city, most of which remains in the hands of the RSF.

They claim the army and mostly Islamist allied militiamen are now sharing the infamy earned by RSF earlier in the war through its widespread abuse of civilians. Between them, say the residents, the army and the RSF are now responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture and arbitrary detentions in the capital.

The UN and rights groups have started to target the army and its allies for war crimes such as reckless air strikes and shelling that have claimed the lives of thousands of civilians.

This month, army troops and allied volunteers were accused of the extrajudicial killing of several suspected RSF members or sympathisers in Khartoum areas they retook from the paramilitary.

Earlier this month in Al Jazira region south of Khartoum, RSF fighters killed more than 100 men, women and children to avenge the defection to the army of one of its senior commanders, according to Sudanese pro-democracy and professional groups.

On Wednesday, a suspected army drone hit Khartoum’s main outdoor market, starting fires and igniting fuel lorries parked in the vicinity, according to witnesses.

“It used to be the army in their olive-green fatigues and the RSF fighters in khaki. Now, we see armed men wearing red and yellow bandannas and T-shirts,” said Mozmel Yahya, who lives in Omdurman which, together with the cities of Khartoum and Bahri make up the greater capital area.

“Those armed civilians insult people, ask others about their ethnicities and regions of origin. They also break into homes and steal precious possessions like mobile phones and jewellery.

“We are thinking of escaping Khartoum to Kassala [in eastern Sudan] but we are afraid that we will be robbed at gunpoint before we board the bus.”

Al Shafie Ahmed reported from Kampala, Uganda.